Dark Heart (Dark Heart 1)

I look into his red eyes. I forgive you. It’ll be okay.

Then I brace for pain and jump on Tony. There’s a scuffle. I end up on top of Tony, braced on my unhurt arm. It takes every ounce of strength I have to wrestle him for the gun. Pain ignites all through me like a fucking fire. We roll on the stage and he’s on top, then I’m on top, trying to reach between us to get to his fucking hand…

My fingertips brush metal.

Then things go black. When I blink, I’m being hauled off the stage. Up the aisle toward the room’s back door. I hear fluent, hard Italian from behind me and I wrench around so I can see if—

Still alive. Oh fuck, my head. Hurts so bad I gag as my legs buckle.

“C’mon,” someone hisses. They’ve each got an arm.

Someone smacks me in the mouth. I know it’s gotta be the butt of a gun because it pings against one of my teeth, and pain explodes through my face.

“FUCK!”

I get a punch in, whirl, and see a gun pressed to my dad’s cheek. I don’t think. I just break free and run toward him.

I hear someone yell “Do it,” and everything slows down.

Seconds pass while I’m trying to climb on stage with just the one arm. In those seconds, Tony kicks my dad’s chair over. As I heft myself onto the stage, a deafening BOOM!

I feel like the world is folding inward as I sink to the floor. Blood spreads out around my father’s body—thick, dark crimson, separating into slim vertical lines as it spreads across the smooth, wax-polished boards of the stage.

Two slow blinks cement it in my mind forever: the hunch of his back, the way his hands are purple—tied too tightly with a rope, the swollen fingers. He’s got blue jeans on; I watch as the little denim fibers go red. Then my eyes shift to his ruined head.

The floor is hard under my shoe soles and the impact hurts somewhere far off. Distantly I know my legs are pumping, body’s moving—I can feel the air around me.

Something slams into me—it’s the peeling red door. I sling it open, unaware of anything until I’m outside of the building. I hear guttural screaming and I’m outside in the street. Someone is howling in the street. People shouting, tires are squealing. I smell burning rubber.

I can’t go back inside.

I can’t leave my dad like that.

Someone’s screaming too loud. Someone’s going to get killed.

I’m inside my house and something awful happened. Something awful happened. Something awful happened and I can’t…

And so I get the baseball bat he kept at his bedside and swing it, swing it, swing it till there’s black spots in my eyes and then it’s all black. Everyone…brought down by something.

I curl over on my knees and let it take me.Chapter Twenty-FourEliseIn the dream, we’re on a boat. We’re standing on the bow like in that movie Titanic. His arms are wrapped around me from behind, and I feel good. So it’s strange that someone’s screaming “HELP!”

I smile at him. Then the screams cut through the dream. I sit up, reeling in my dark room, gripped with knowing. This is real—and I know what the screams mean even as I jump out of my bed and fly toward my sister’s room.

When I find Becca on the bed and Maura leaning over her, counting in a reedy voice as she does chest compressions, I’m not surprised. Only horrified as I move toward the bed, my eyes locked onto Becca’s blue lips.

I hear a shout. My father nearly knocks me over rushing to the bed. He pushes Maura off Becca and grabs my sister’s head—too rough. It makes my stomach lurch, the way her body’s limp.

“Becca! C’mon baby!”

Then my mom’s shrieking behind me. She’s a rush of silk and braided hair. She doesn’t get near my sister, instead grabs the bedside phone from Maura. The nurse moves away. My mother sobs as she holds the phone.

My sister is dying.

“Becca!” I dash over to the bed and lean down over her. “I love you.”

“Get back, Elise!”

Maura scuffles with my dad. She’s back in charge of CPR. My dad says, “Come back, Becca. You can do it!”

Her lips are so dark. What happened?

“Becca bear…” The word cracks as I reach for her, pushing dark locks off her forehead. “I love you.” Her skin is cool and rubbery. I have the thought: She’s dead already.

My eyes sweep her small form—lingering on her diaper, folded back the way she likes it. Something swells in my throat, something too big that I push out like a sob.

“I love you!”

I know that this time she won’t be back. My mother’s wailing rises to the ceiling, falls back down the walls. She pushes Maura off my sister.